Best-Ever Pizza Dough Recipe {Party} (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to great pizza dough? ›

The secret to great dough isn't kneading or throwing . . .

It's good old-fashioned H20. “Water, water, water,” says Falco. “Pizza dough made at home should be 50 percent water. Pizza needs to cook longer in a home oven, which means the dough needs to be more hydrated.”

Add sugar and oil to the dough

So what two ingredients set New York-style pizza crust apart? It's a combination of oil and sugar that gets added to the usual suspects of flour, yeast, water, and salt. When oil is added to pizza dough, it adds flavor, but more importantly, it coats individual grains of flour.

The best flour for making Deep-Dish Pizza Dough is all-purpose flour. In bakeries and pizzerias, Pizza Flour is often used because it is a high-protein flour that produces a light and airy crust. However, all-purpose flour will also work well for Deep-Dish Pizza Dough.

Not Letting the Dough Rest

Proofing – which is the process of putting the dough aside and allowing it to rise – enables the yeast to leaven through fermentation, making the dough rise. Not allowing your dough to proof for long enough will result in a hard, dense and just plain gross pizza base.

Salt: Salt adds necessary flavor. Sugar: 1 Tablespoon of sugar increases the yeast's activity and tenderizes the dough, especially when paired with a little olive oil. Cornmeal: Cornmeal isn't in the dough, but it's used to dust the pizza pan. Cornmeal gives the pizza crust a little extra flavor and crisp.

The first and most important ingredient in pizza dough is flour. Flour is the foundation of the dough and provides the structure and texture that makes pizza crust so great. When choosing flour for pizza dough, it's important to use high-protein flour.

The most commonly used cheese on pizza is mozzarella, because it melts beautifully without turning oily or lumpy. Cheeses such as feta, haloumi and aged gouda are tasty toppings, but they're a bit fancy for families and don't melt as well as mozzarella. Low-moisture mozzarella in particular has great melt and stretch.

Before you add the sauce or any toppings, lightly brush the stretched pizza dough with olive oil and prick it all over with a fork. Brushing it with oil will prevent any excess moisture from seeping into the crust. No more soggy pizza crust!

Yes, it will, but very slowly. Pizza makers will cold proof dough, meaning they refrigerate it for 24 to 72 hours after it is made. Cold proofing allows the yeast to slowly eat sugar and ferment the dough, which gives it flavor. The longer you allow the dough to ferment, the more flavor it develops.

How do you make homemade pizza taste better? ›

Cornmeal and olive oil make all the difference

Inspired by the pizza crust often found in delivery pizzas, the publication points to cornmeal as the key to a quality texture and suggests basting the dough with an oil-based spread to enhance the color and flavor.

Double zero flour/Tipo 00 flour

Use Tipo 0 or Tipo 00 flour. Tipo is a grading of flour on the Italian flour scale. And these flours have just the right amount of protein content - around 12.5% for pizza baking.

For Chewy Pizza Crust, Use Bread Flour

Higher protein content means higher gluten content, as we now know, so using bread flour in your pizza dough will result in a stretchy dough that's less likely to tear. You get a very chewier, more bread-like pizza crust when you make your dough with bread flour.

No matter the form it's in, any yeast can work well for making pizza dough. It all depends on how much time you want to spend making it, and what kind of flavor you want. For example, sourdough starter will produce a much different-tasking crust than other yeast types.

Pizza dough loves warmth, so if you can find a way to add some extra heat, your dough will rise faster. One way to do this is to preheat your oven to the lowest setting (usually around 200 degrees Fahrenheit) and then turn it off. Place your pizza dough in the warm oven for 10-15 minutes until it begins to rise.

So, while oil is an essential ingredient for a delicious pizza, it does not affect the finished product's taste. Instead, it makes it easier to cook. It also makes it easier to prepare, as it will increase the amount of dough in your finished product.